Jay Stratton, the civilian who ran the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, used a Fox News interview and a new book to say the government is holding craft he does not consider human.
Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent Life was published October 13 by William Morrow. The night before, Stratton sat with Bret Baier on Special Report. Fox also posted the conversation as a podcast. Stratton said he spent more than 16 of nearly 33 years in uniform and intelligence “investigating UAP and non-human intelligent life on behalf of the U.S. government.”
Asked if humanity is alone, he said no.
“Humanity is not the only intelligent life in the universe, nor do we know the intent of the non-human intelligent life that’s here. It’s very concerning.”
Baier asked whether the United States government has non-human craft. Stratton said yes, and that he has seen non-human beings and non-human craft with his own eyes. He then put the claim in program terms:
“Both the defense contractor community and the government have a craft of non-human origin. There is an ongoing program to capture and reverse engineer this technology. And really, we’re in a secret Cold War race to do that.”
He said the people who have held what he called an “80-year monopoly” on the topic believe the secret is too intense for the public. His view on the interview was narrower: the public can handle the basic fact that humans are not alone, even if other parts stay classified. He said he does not think President Trump has seen the evidence. Baier said Stratton has been advising the White House since the files were ordered released. Stratton’s answer was about the president still being shielded, not a description of that advice.
A triangle over a nuclear site
Stratton dated his own turn to a Defense Intelligence Agency job as chief of air and space warfare, where he said he had access to the most classified U.S. programs and to adversary technology. A colleague, he said, brought him a video of a triangular UAP over nuclear missile silos in restricted airspace, flying in ways he could not match to known systems.
Baier read a line from the book: “a black triangle aircraft, no wings, no tail, no exhaust, no visible propulsion of any kind.” Stratton said that, as an aerospace engineer in that DIA seat, he was in a position to identify what flies, and this did not fit. He called it a threat because it exceeded U.S. capabilities and because the intent and origin were unknown.
He also said UAP activity around nuclear weapons is ongoing, not only historical, and that such objects have both deactivated and activated nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia. That line is his, on Fox. It is not a new document.
A submarine as bait, and a report that was not filed
Baier read another passage: the bait would be a nuclear submarine, used to draw a UAP close enough to monitor, track, and if possible capture or recover. Stratton said he worked several such efforts. One, he said, put a nuclear submarine off the East Coast with a Navy P-3 overhead. On the first mission, he said, a UAP appeared and the P-3 collected data. He did not describe the data.
A separate account in the book, which he confirmed on air, involves two admirals and a commander at the Navy’s Top Gun training site. They told him they had seen a UAP “phase in,” their words, over a training building and then vanish. Stratton said he needed that in the intelligence record, so he brought them to the Pentagon for a debrief. A more senior officer, someone Stratton said he believes is part of what he calls the legacy program, intercepted them and told them their reputations were at risk if they filed. They did not file.
Asked about a friend’s warning in the book that those people “don’t play games” and have “done worse than threaten,” Stratton said that when secrets are treated as that important to national security, “steps have been taken to remove the problem. And the people.” He did not name a victim or a case.
What he says the book is, and is not
Stratton said he briefed Congress many times, starting with Senator Harry Reid in 2007, and kept doing it until he retired. He said the book is meant to put cases in one place, including incidents over U.S. bases that have not been discussed publicly, and descriptions of recovered craft. On the question people ask first, he said he still cannot answer it. After 16 years on the job for the government, “we do not know the intent.”
Baier noted that the Pentagon’s UAP office has said it found no evidence of extraterrestrials. Stratton’s reply was that somebody is wrong, and that the country pays a price if the public record stays where it is. He also said he thinks China and Russia are trying to reverse-engineer craft of non-human origin. That is his assessment, not a declassified finding.
The publisher’s description says Stratton cofounded AAWSAP, learned of an 80-year crash-retrieval program hidden from presidents, and later stood up the UAP Task Force. Those sentences are the jacket. The Navy’s Scott Bray email release is the paper record of his Task Force role: a September 2020 email said he was “working directly for Scott Bray.” A television series based on the memoir was already announced in September. The Fox interview is the first time Stratton has put the craft-and-beings claim in a network interview tied to the published book.
Pentagon pre-publication review clears a manuscript of classified information. It is not a finding that the claims are true. AARO’s public reports remain the office’s position until the Department says otherwise. Stratton is now on the record, by name, saying that position is wrong, and that he has seen the craft and the beings himself.
